“How was the fishin’？” Gallowgate asked, trying to warm himself over the little flame. His naked skin was covered in ink from his ankle to his cuff.
“Terrible.” Mungo didn’t yet know what he was going to tell the man, he hadn’t gotten that far in his mind. He only knew that whatever he was going to do, he would do it in the morning when it was dry, when he could run.
Mungo watched him burst open the backpack and take out the tinned ravioli and the Isle of Skye whisky. He handed the boy a tin and Mungo realized he hadn’t eaten since the night before. There was a ring pull and the lid separated easily. It was sharp as a razor blade. Mungo licked it, found a comfort in its sharpness, and placed it carefully to the side. Then he held the tin over the tea candle, tried to warm the cold pasta, but it only sent big black puffs of smoke into the air, so he gave up, and ate the ravioli cold. He was ravenous, shovelling big handfuls of the mushy pasta into his mouth and breathing through his nose to swallow it quicker. Gallowgate unscrewed the whisky and offered it to him. Mungo drank it in easy gulps, quickly becoming used to the taste.
“Are ye looking forward to going home the morra?”
Mungo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, it left a smear across his chin. “Aye. When will we leave?”
“Och, no rush,” said Gallowgate. He wasn’t interested in the food. “Let’s gie auld Chrissy a chance to get that bastardin’ trout, eh?”
Something that had felt like hope dampened inside Mungo. Gallowgate reached out his hand and locked it around the boy’s kneecap. “Here!” he said. “How did ye get that?”
There was a gash on Mungo’s calf, it wasn’t deep but it was long. He must have cut it on a sharp rock when he was pushing the last of the air from St Christopher. Gallowgate poured some of the whisky into his open mouth. He leaned over Mungo’s calf and let it dribble out. It hit the gash and burned. Mungo struggled to pull his leg away but Gallowgate gripped him by the back of the knee. He laid the length of his hot whisky-soaked tongue against his cut. Then he licked the blue shin bone like it was a sugary ice pole. “Saliva is meant to help. Does that feel better?”
“I don’t want to do that.” It was the flattest voice he could manage. Mungo pulled his legs underneath himself and tucked them inside his cagoule.
Gallowgate took another throatful of the whisky, the tea light throwing his shadow against the side of the tent. “If ye don’t want to do that, how comes ye saved me the sleeping bag next to yours, eh?” Gallowgate removed a burr that had stuck to Mungo’s face. He burned it over the candle.
Mungo realized he had made a mistake. He had only worried about hiding the truth about St Christopher, not what might come after. Gallowgate twisted like he was uncomfortable. He stretched out his left leg, where there was an inked banner above his knee that read in bold blue letters: No Retreat, No Surrender.
“It’s funny,” said Gallowgate. “After your mammy telt us the stories about you ah thought ye would’ve jumped at the chance to get away for a wee weekend. She is disgusted by you, ye know. She practically begged us to take ye away. She’s terrified ye’ll become a wee soft boy like the Fenian ye were messing around wi’。”
Mungo’s face was pulling and he could tell his eye wanted to twitch despite the swelling around it. His spine was against the side of the tent and he could feel by the tilt of his body that he was as far away as he could squeeze himself. Gallowgate reached out his hand again, he cupped it around the back of Mungo’s neck and dragged him back towards him. He tilted his head and locked his lips over Mungo’s. It was an insistent kiss, his tongue pushing Mungo to part his lips. Mungo thought about opening his mouth then, allowing the tongue inside, and biting down on it, ripping it out whole, till it lay fresh and quivering like some of the butcher’s meat that Mo-Maw liked so much.
“Stop.” He couldn’t push Gallowgate away from him, so he collapsed, allowed himself to become heavy and slip from his grip. “I don’t want to do that.”
Gallowgate’s lips were wet with his own saliva. There was hurt in his eyes. “Well, we’ll see.” He wiped his mouth and drank more of the whisky. “‘Asides, what makes ye think ah’m going to let you go home to Glasgow if we’re no pals? Ah cannae have ye running around all over the place telling tales on me, can ah?”
“I won’t tell.” Mungo meant it. His family already thought of him as something less than a person and he couldn’t bear the shame. He pictured Chickie Calhoun in his dead mammy’s flat, with his comfortable indoor shoes and the way he used his spectacles to keep the feathered hair out of his eyes. He knew how the scheme looked at Chickie. “Please.”
Gallowgate looked like he was weighing something heavy in his heart. He was shaking his head and looking at Mungo with a great pity. “Ah don’t know if ah can trust you, Mungo.”
Underneath the waterproof sheet the ground had been pulsing from the pouring rain. Tiny rivers of water tried to find their way past the tent and around the boy to lower ground. Now Mungo’s head felt like it was spinning too. Everything was shifting. This was the sixth face Gallowgate had shown him: the victim, the hurt person, the one who was disappointed in Mungo.
He tried to steady himself with thoughts of Glasgow, of Jodie and the warm front room of the tenement flat, the way the air smelled of static on the days when they cooried in together away from the world and watched television.
“You can trust me,” he tried to smile.
Gallowgate wrapped his hand around Mungo’s wrist. The tent shuddered in the wind. “Ah mean, if we’re no pals, mibbe ah should stop being so friendly.”
EIGHTEEN
For the past few days he had been lousy with optimism, stupid, stocious with happiness. But now he lost all his bottle. All his newfound confidence ebbed away, and his shoulders took on their familiar slouch. Mungo made himself smaller again, and cringing, he held the gift behind his back and wished he hadn’t said anything at all.
James lay sprawled upon the navy-blue carpet, his head resting against his father’s settee, his neck at an angle that looked broken. “C’mon. Don’t be lit that.”
“Just forget it.”
James sat up and wrapped himself around Mungo the way monkeys did – maybe this is what Mungo had wanted all along. James was peering around him and snatching for the parcel. Mungo held the box at arm’s length, but James’s arms were longer. “Awright. Fine. Get off of me.”
“You don’t want me to get off of you, not really.” James was grinning, but he did as Mungo asked.
Mungo sank back on his haunches and reluctantly handed him the small gift. It was wrapped in a hand-drawn paisley pattern, made up of a hundred swooping pigeons, with wings outstretched and tipped with stripes, swirling across a sky full of puffy clouds. He had drawn it specially for James and he had held his breath as he sliced the page from his sketchbook. Hours upon hours of meticulous linework with a fine-nibbed pen, intricate as Toile de Jouy wallpaper.
James unwrapped the cassette and turned it in his hands. “What’s on it? It’s no rave music, is it?”